Southern California -- this just in

Santa Monica resident Maria Stone said she was watching "Jeopardy!" in her apartment when a man approached the next-door unit and tried to force his way through the door.

When he could not open the locked door, he pulled down a window screen and climbed inside. He was carrying a knife, Stone said.

“He had that crazy look that he was ready to kill somebody,” Stone said Thursday, providing an account of the Wednesday night incident that ended when officers shot and killed the man suspected of repeatedly stabbing his ex-girlfriend.

The condition of the injured woman was unavailable Thursday morning.

The L.A. County coroner's office had not yet released the name of the suspect, but he was described as being in his late 50s. Stone knew him only as "Frank," the ex-boyfriend of the stabbing victim.

Stone, who lives on the second floor of an eight-unit building in the 2400 block of Ocean Park Boulevard, called police and locked her front door after seeing the man climb through the window.

She recalled the intruder as being the boyfriend her neighbor had moved in with a few weeks before, then quickly broke up with. Another neighbor told her of knowing the man when he had been homeless.

She heard the occupants of the next-door unit, a man and the woman, tell the intruder to put down his knife. Instead, he attacked the woman, Stone said.

“He was stabbing her and she was shouting, 'Somebody help me, please!'” Stone said.

The other man quickly escaped from the window the intruder had used to get inside and screamed for help. Police arrived in moments, Stone said.

The first two officers also could not get through the door, so they, too, entered by the window.

“I heard: ‘Drop the knife!’ Then the other officer said, ‘Drop the knife.’ They warned him two or three times," Stone said. "And then I heard: pow, pow, pow, pow. It was over in four shots. I was in shock at that point.”

Photo: Marie Stone witnessed a man entering the apartment next door through a window and called 911 after hearing the screams of a woman. Police would later break into the apartment and shoot a man as he reportedly was stabbing his ex-girlfriend. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times